What's in your vape juice? (Plus a recipe to create your own!)

In fact, some even consider it a sport today. With cloud competitions and tournaments popping up around the world, where vapers show off their huge puffs of clouds and perform impressive tricks.

Vaping probably rose to popularity due to its versatility in flavours and levels of nicotine strength (0 nicotine options are commonly available) that can be adapted to people with a range of preferences.

From minty and fruity to milky flavours, there’s no end to the variety of juices you can puff. They also come in nicely packaged bottles, making the vaping process a fun experience.

No secrets

Colourful designs aside, you may have wondered what goes into each bottle of tasty goodness.

This may come as a surprise, but it is actually a very simple combination. In fact, you can count all of the ingredients required for a complete bottle of juice in one hand.

The key ingredient that goes into every bottle is vegetable glycerin (VG). This is the ingredient that serves to produce the vapour, defining the vaping experience.

VG carries a rather thick consistency, and is mildly sweet. This sweetness contributes to the overall flavour of the juice, so that is something that needs to be kept in mind when creating the concoction.

The other important ingredient is propylene glycol (PG). It has a thinner consistency compared to VG, and is mainly used to add intensity to the juice.

It is also used to set the temperature of the vapour. Unlike VG, PG is odourless and tasteless, so the amount added in the mix will not affect the flavour.

Use more if you’d like to add an extra hit to your juice. "Propylene glycol" may sound like a fancy word, but it's been in most of the products you’ve been using daily.

Look at the list of ingredients on your toothpaste tube, and chances are, you’ll find PG on the list.

Nicotine is another important ingredient, although optional depending on whether you want this addictive substance in your juice.

Again, the amount of nicotine to add to the mix should be decided based on how strong you want your juice to be.

Some people prefer nicotine-free vape juices and choose to just enjoy the process of vaping and its flavours. If that is the case, you can leave this element out of your mix.

Then of course, you’ll want to include flavouring. Food-grade flavouring is commonly used. These are the same flavours that are widely used in the food you eat and drink.

As you can see, there’s really not much that goes into making these flavorful bottles of goodness.

In fact, here’s a recipe for a bottle of Honeydew Melon juice so you can experiment and try making your own.

Just make sure you keep to the decimals, as a slight difference in the mix can result in a huge difference in the flavour outcome:

25ml / 3.15grams of Nicotine 36mg (100% VG)

3ml / 3.11grams of PG dilutant

6.6ml / 8.2grams of VG dilutant

3ml / 3grams of Honeydew (TPA)

*This recipe makes juice with a 6mg strength, and a PG/VG ratio of 40/60.

Alternatively, to make life easy (because the world is complicated enough), you can also order honeydew flavours from a variety of brands here.

Hopefully this clears the air on any doubts you have about vape juices. Of course, just like everything else, vape in moderation. Anything you do excessively will cause harm, so remember to know your limit.